Friday, March 28, 2008

"Go Greyhound" by Bob Hicok

Go Greyhound

A few hours after Des Moinesthe toilet overflowed.This wasn't the adventure it sounds.

I sat with a man whose tattoosweighed more than I did.He played Hendrix on mouth guitar.His Electric Ladyland lipsweren't fast enoughand if pitch and melodyare the rudiments of music,this was justmemory, a body nostalgicfor the touch of adored sound.

Hope's a smaller thing on a bus.

You hope a forgotten smoke consortswith lint in the pocket of lastresort to be upwindof the human condition, that the babysleepsand when this never happens,that she cries with the lullaby meter of the sea.

We were swallowed by rhythm.The ultra blondwho removed her wig and applied fresh loops of duct tapeto her skull,her companion who held a mirrorand popped his denturesin and out of place,the boy who cut stuffingfrom the seat where his mothershould have been--there was a little more sleep in our thoughts, it was easier to yield.

To what, exactly--the suspicion that what we watch watches back,cornfields that stare at our hands,downtownsthat hold us in their windowsthrough the night?

Or faith, strange to feelin that zoo of manners.

I had drool on my shirt and breathof the undead, a guydropped empty Buds on the floorlike gravity was bornto provide this service,we were white and black trashwho'd comein an outhouse on wheels and still

some had grown--in touching the spirited shirtson clotheslines,after watching a sky of starlingsflow like cursiveover wheat--back into creatures capable of a wish.

As we entered ArizonaI thought I smelled the ocean,liked the lie of thisand closed my eyes as shadowspuppeted against my lids.

We brought our failures with us,their taste, their smell.But the kidwho threw up in the backpushed to the window anyway,opened it and let the wind clean his face,screamed something I couldn't make outbut agreed within shape, a sound I recognizedas everything I'd come so farto give away.